Part 22 (2/2)

Enjoyment of this species of perpetual day soon comes to an end. After the traveller has written home to everybody once by broad daylight at ten o'clock, the fun of the thing is over: normal sleepiness begins to hunger for its rights, and dissatisfaction takes the place of wondering amus.e.m.e.nt. This dissatisfaction reaches its climax in a few days; then, if he is wise, the traveller provides himself with several pieces of dark green cambric, which he pins up at his windows at bedtime, thereby making it possible to get seven or eight hours' rest for his tired eyes. But the green cambric will not shut out sounds: and he is lucky if he is not kept awake until one or two o'clock every night by the unceasing tread and loud chatter of the cheerful Norwegians, who have been forced to form the habit of sitting up half their night-time to get in the course of a year their full quota of daytime.

”I tink King Ring lived not far from dis place,” said Katrina, stretching her head out of first one and then another of the five windows, and looking up and down the busy streets; ”not in Christiania, but I tink not very far away. Did ever you hear of King Ring? Oh, dat is our best story in all Norway,--te saga of King Ring!”

”Cannot you tell it to me, Katrina?” said I, trying to speak as if I had never heard of King Ring.

”Vell, King Ring, he loved Ingeborg. I cannot tell; I do not remember.

My father, you see,--not my right father, but my father the hatter, he whose little home I showed you in Bergen,--he used to take books out vere you pay so much for one week, you see; and I only get half an hour, maybe, or few minutes, but I steal de book, and read all vat I can. I vas only little den: oh, it is years ago. But it is our best story in all Norway. Ingeborg was beauty, you see, and all in te kings' families vat vanted her: many ghentlemens, and Ring, he killed three or four I tink; and den after he killed dem three or four, den he lost her, after all, don't you see; and tat was te fun of it.”

”But I don't think that was funny at all, Katrina,” I said. ”I don't believe King Ring thought it so.”

”No, I don't tink, either; but den, you see, he had all killed for nothing, and den he lost her himself. I tink it was on the ice: it broke. A stranger told dem not to take the ice; but King Ring, he would go. I tink dat was te way it was.”

It was plain that Katrina's reminiscences of her stolen childish readings of the Frithiof's Saga were incorrect as well as fragmentary, but her eager enthusiasm over it was delicious. Her face kindled as she repeated, ”Oh, it is our best story in all Norway!” and when I told her that the next day she should go to a circulating library and get a copy of the book and read it to me, her eyes actually flashed with pleasure.

Early the next morning she set off. A nondescript roving commission she bore: ”A copy of the Frithiof's Saga in Norwegian, [how guiltily I feared she might stumble upon it in an English translation!] and anything in the way of fruit or vegetables.” These were her instructions. It was an hour before she came back, flushed with victory, sure of her success and of my satisfaction. She burst into the room, brandis.h.i.+ng in one hand two turnips and a carrot; in the other she hugged up in front of her a newspaper, bursting and red-stained, full of fresh raspberries; under her left arm, held very tight, a little old copy of the Frithiof's Saga. Breathless, she dropped the raspberries down, newspaper and all, in a rolling pile on the table, exclaiming, ”I tink I shall not get tese home, after I get te oders in my oder hand! Are tese what you like?” holding the turnips and carrot close up to my face. ”I vas asking for oranges,” she continued, ”but it is one month ago since they leaved Christiania.”

”What!” I exclaimed.

”One mont ago since dey were to see in Christiania,” she repeated impatiently. ”It is not mont since I vas eating dem in Bergen. I tought in a great place like Christiania dere would be more tings as in Bergen; but it is all shtories, you see.”

How well I came to know the look of that little ragged old copy of the grand Saga, and of Katrina's face, as she bent puzzling over it, every now and then bursting out with some e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed bit of translation, beginning always with, ”Vell, you see!” I kept her hard at work at it, reading it to me, while I lingered over my lonely breakfasts and dinners, or while we sat under fragrant fir-trees on country hills.

Wherever we went, the little old book and Katrina's Norwegian and English Dictionary, older still, went with us.

Her English always incalculably wrong and right, in startling alternations, became a thousand times droller when she set herself to deliberate renderings of the lines of the Saga. She went often, in one bound, in a single stanza, from the extreme of nonsense to the climax of poetical beauty of phrase; her p.r.o.nunciation, always as unexpected and irregular as her construction of phrases, grew less and less correct, as she grew excited and absorbed in the tale. The troublesome _th_ sound, which in ordinary conversation she managed to enunciate in perhaps one time out of ten, disappeared entirely from her poetry; and in place of it, came the most refres.h.i.+ng _t_'s and _d_'s. The worse her p.r.o.nunciation and the more broken her English, the better I liked it, and the more poetical was the translation. Many men have tried their hand at translation of the Frithiof's Saga, but I have read none which gave me so much pleasure as I had from hearing Katrina's; neither do I believe that any poet has studied and rewritten it, however cultured he might be, with more enthusiasm and delight than this Norwegian girl of the people, to whom many of the mythological allusions were as unintelligible as if they had been written in Sanskrit. She had a convenient way of disposing of those when she came to such as she did not understand: ”Dat's some o' dem old G.o.ds, you see,--dem G.o.ds vat dey used to wors.h.i.+p.” It was evident from many of Katrina's terms of expression, and from her peculiar delight in the most poetical lines and thoughts in the Saga, that she herself was of a highly poetical temperament. I was more and more impressed by this, and began at last to marvel at the fineness of her appreciations. But I was not prepared for her turning the tables suddenly upon me, as she did one day, after I had helped her to a few phrases in a stanza over which she had come to a halt in difficulties.

”As sure 's I'm aliv,” she exclaimed, ”I believe you're a poet your own self, too!” While I was considering what reply to make to this charge, she went on: ”Dat's what tey call me in my own country. I can make songs. I make a many: all te birtdays and all te extra days in our family, all come to me and say, 'Now, Katrina, you has to make song.' Dey tink I can make song in one minute for all! [What a kins.h.i.+p is there, all the world over, in some sorts of misery!] Ven I've went to America, I made a nice song,” she added. ”I vould like you to see.”

”Indeed, I would like very much to see it, Katrina,” I replied. ”Have you it here?”

”I got it in my head, here,” she said, laughing, tapping her broad forehead. ”I keeps it in my head.”

But it was a long time before I could persuade her to give it to me.

She persisted in saying that she could not translate it.

”Surely, Katrina,” I said, ”it cannot be harder than the Frithiof's Saga, of which you have read me so much.”

”Dat is very different,” was all I could extract from her. I think that she felt a certain pride in not having her own stanzas fail of true appreciation owing to their being put in broken English. At last, however, I got it. She had been hard at work a whole forenoon in her room with her dictionary and pencil. In the afternoon she came to me, holding several sheets of much-scribbled brown paper in her hand, and said shyly, ”Now I can read it.” I wrote it down as she read it, only in one or two instances helping her with a word, and here it is:--

SONG ON MY DEPARTURE FROM BERGEN FOR AMERICA.

The time of departure is near, And I am no more in my home; But, G.o.d, be thou my protector.

I don't know how it will go, Out on the big ocean, From my father and mother; I don't know for sure where at last My dwelling-place will be on the earth.

My thanks to all my dear, To my foster father and mother; In the distant land, as well as the near, Your word shall be my guide.

It may happen that we never meet on earth, But my wish is that G.o.d forever Be with you and bless you.

Don't forget; bring my compliments over To that place where my cradle stood,-- The dear Akrehavnske waves, What I lately took leave of.

Don't mourn, my father and mother, It is to my benefit; My best thanks for all the goodness You have bestowed on me.

<script>